The experiences that a child can independently carry out from the first months of life, experimenting potential and limits, are fundamental for the acquisition of motor skills and the strengthening of self -confidence
Moving in nature is not dangerous, on the contrary, it discover the potential of one’s body and expands the vision of the space by training the gaze and the ability to grasp environmental stimuli.
Every day, looking at the children of primary school, I wonder: why do they crash against everything? Why don’t they calculate the distances? Why can’t they manage, in an orderly way, a page? Why do they struggle to copy from the blackboard? Where do the difficulties of managing space and coordination arises, in particular the eye-manual one?
Learning is experimenting
The answer lies in the educational choices that are made between 0 and 6 years. Children live between television, sofa and refrigerator and when they play sports, they do it very often in closed environments. Their eyes have little familiar with the horizon, with depth and distances.
Education is made up of many small gestures, small choices that are part of a larger picture, of a project that each adult chooses to carry out when he decides to accept the role of parent. The project is long -term and aims to grow tomorrow’s man.
Everything the child learns to do is the result of what he experienced before. It will not be sitting just because it must; He will do it after learning to move freely.
How then then the movement, and in particular the outdoor one, allows the child to acquire some transversal skills that will allow him to sit at 6 years at the school desk, and be ready to learn? The response is built through many activities: first of all, in order of the growth line, the discovery of the environment and the strengthening of one’s physical, intellectual, social skills through autonomous and free movement.
Learning begins immediately
A child begins to learn from the first moment of life. After the very first months, when the view is completed, lying on the wheelchair or on the stroller, it manages to grasp the blue of the sky, the shapes of the clouds or the movement of the leaves moved by the wind. If, on the other hand, the child is in the band or in the pierce, he sees the world from another point of view. In both cases, he sees but does not touch and does not discover. The adult, however, brought with him a blanket, spreads it on the grass, lies the child to you and spreads with him: he decided to let him do it alone.
The child then experiences the consistency of the grass; He wants to touch her and thus tries to go, to roll or to pull up to the edges of the blanket to touch those green threads that move a little and are a little stopped. Once you come to the edge, look and find that there are things between the wires of grass are moving, ants. The adult observes and limits himself to saying the name of things without intervening. The child looks at the ants, intrigued his hand to touch them and makes that small, very important movement that goes to train the fine musculature of his hands, to try to tighten them between index and thumb. But then a swallow passes and turning her head to follow her loses her balance and finds she finds her belly up with her eyes aimed at heaven; He finds the swallow and, intrigued, trying to follow it with his gaze, try to grab it by lengthening his arms. He feels barking and his attention is captured by a dog that runs.
The next day, the same walk is repeated but the child already knows what he will find, it will not be all new, indeed, he will be to look for the ants, the swallow or the dog and will discover other new things. We will have put memory and curiosity into motion.
Leave to do … without fear
In all this, the child was able to meet an infinite number of things and has been able to discover and develop gestures and movements through the senses: touching things, feeling the noises, knowing them and not fear them, grasping perfumes and smells, grasping the horizon in relation to his hands and feet.
Time passes and the child learns to walk, and everything that has been able to see now can be explored for months. The adults, at this stage, live in terror that they hurt themselves, but the best way to avoid it is to allow him to try to do thingsand if he falls, allow him to get up alone. This will allow him to learn about the environment, as well as looking where he puts his feet will be useful to learn to coordinate independently. Coordinate the body with the environment, the feet with the soil, the hands with objects are complex processes that require knowledge of the world, ability to move and above all coordination of the eyes with the rest of the body.
To learn more, in this article we talk about the perception of risk after Coronavirus’s pandemic.
First times safely
What is the role of the adult at this stage? That of dealing with security. In his first few times a child needs to feel safe but, at the same time, to do it alone. Which means that the adult must be there, guide him with his voice, encourage him, reassure him, let him try to cross a lawn, to overcome an obstacle, to climb a tree, without touching him or replace him.
If the child has been able to explore by degrees, independently, when he can walk or run, or he will be able to jump, he will do it knowing he can do it.
“I’m capable!”
As time passes, the child will acquire security in his body and will increase by himself the degree of difficulty in the things he would like to learn to do. If you decide to climb a tree, and try alone, seeing that it will not be able to abandon the company, but only temporarily. He will try again after some time, when he feels safer in movements, triggering the first self -assessment and self -esteem processes. If, on the other hand, the adult intervenes to help him, only one message passes: “You are not capable”.
If the gym is the outdoor space, the children will know the horizon and know how to copy from the blackboard, calculate their distances and no longer crash into the jamber of the door or on others, will be able to run and jump, when you can and where it is allowed, and will be able to sit down to listen.
Discoveries at hand
Francesca goes to the park on foot, is only five minutes from home, but with her child who is already 3 years old, it also takes half an hour; Indeed, sometimes, in the park it doesn’t even get there. Pass along a canal crossed by a wooden bridge on which you can sit with the legs in dangling to look at the flowing water bringing branches, fish and algae. From the shore of the canal you can pull the stones and you can jump up and down from the sidewalk. Why are these activities so important? Why The child learns to manage the movements of his body and the conquests of the day before bases the discoveries of his skills under construction.
